


Between Memory and Moment

by donutsweeper



Category: Charmed (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Future Fic, Gen, NPT Treat, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 05:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15260316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsweeper/pseuds/donutsweeper
Summary: Chris was going to save his brother or die trying.He never considered the possibility he might do both and still see the future he'd worked so hard to change.





	Between Memory and Moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeffgoldblumvevo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffgoldblumvevo/gifts).



Wyatt was watching him as he paged through the Book of Shadows. Nothing had gone as planned today, but Chris was still determined to make it right. He was sure they could fix whatever the hell was wrong with this world and then send him back to his own time before little-him was born. There had to be a spell, something…. What was that noise? 

"Hello?"

He looked around the attic, but it was empty other than Wyatt who was watching him from the safety of his playpen. If something was wrong he'd have put up his forcefield, right? Chris looked back down at the book before he heard it again. It was definitely the creaking noise that the floorboards made sometimes. 

Unable to shake the feeling of being watched, he abandoned the Book and went over to Wyatt. "Okay, it's time to get you out of here," he muttered, and began reaching down to pick Wyatt up when he was suddenly thrown across the room.

Then Gideon was there, an athame in hand, threatening him and Wyatt, but Chris didn't stop to listen to what he was saying. He'd come all this way, sacrificed so much, he wasn't going to let anyone, not even an Elder, get anywhere his brother. Flinging Gideon away with his powers, Chris ran forward. If he could grab Wyatt, he could orb the two of them to safety. Gideon might be able to track them, but all he had to do was—

Suddenly Gideon materialized out of nowhere and a sharp pain blossomed in his side, whiting out all other thoughts. He'd failed.

Chris had failed.

"Dad?" Leo could save Wyatt. Leo _would_ save Wyatt. 

He tried to keep it together. 

He tried to fight against the magic, the blood loss, and the pain. 

He tried to tell his father to leave him, to explain that saving Wyatt would save the future, to make him understand that he would do anything, _anything_ to prevent that timeline from happening again. 

He did all that while trying to stay.

"Don't give up, okay?" his father begged.

He wasn't. He was trusting Leo and the Charmed Ones to finish what he'd come here to do. They'd save the future for him. He wasn't giving up, he just couldn't stay any longer. His breath caught in his throat. 

He slipped away.

And then woke up.

He was in the manor but it wasn't _the_ manor, not any of the ones he knew. It wasn't the house he'd grown up in, nor the museum it had eventually become, and it wasn't the one he'd travelled back in time into either. He recognized the room, but it had been baby Wyatt's room the last time he saw it and now there was a bed where the crib had been and it had a slight empty, stale feeling to it, like it hadn't seen much use recently.

His hands flew to his side, but the stab wound was gone. Had dad taken care of Gideon and then been able to heal it? Wait a minute, what was he wearing? Jeans were jeans and familiar enough even if they seem to fit oddly around his ankles, but the t-shirt he had on had the name of a band he'd never even heard of. This wasn't what he'd been wearing earlier, when he'd… died.

What had happened to him? Was it another spell? Another kind of alternate world?

Voices drifted in from the hall, muffled enough he couldn't make out the words, but getting stronger and louder. Not knowing who it was, and just in case whoever was talking was coming to check on him, Chris snapped his eyes shut and tried to alter his breathing to mimic being asleep. Until he knew for sure where he was and what had happened it would probably be better for him if no one realized he was awake.

"You were supposed to be staying with him!" The speaker, female, not young but not a full grown adult, sounded disappointed and annoyed. It wasn't anyone he recognized, although there was something that might have been familiar about it. 

"I was! I've only been gone for maybe a minute, two tops!" That was a girl's voice, maybe a little younger than the first, and one he didn't know at all. 

"What if something happened while you were gone? The manor isn't always safe. How many times has," the first person began, before breaking off at the sound of someone orbing in. "Any luck at Magic School?"

"Nope. And don't worry, everyone's still being all secretive, practically buried in whatever it is they've been researching the last few weeks so it wasn't hard to make sure they didn't see me." The surprise at hearing Wyatt, adult Wyatt, nearly startled Chris enough to give up the ruse of pretending to still be asleep, but thankfully he was able to restrain himself and no one seemed to notice.

"Did they find out we went after some demons even though we promised we wouldn't?" Chris thought that might be the second girl.

"Yes, because of course I went straight up to them and said 'I know you guys made us promise to be extra careful and stay as safe as possible until you figure out whatever it is you've been working on, but Mel and P.J. decided to do a little vanquishing anyway and got in _way_ over their heads and Chris and I had to go rescue them.'"

One of the girls made a squawking noise at that.

"And then I went on to tell them that Chris took a serious hit, a blast straight to the chest that sent him through a wall, and even though I healed him he hasn't woken up."

"You didn't!"

Wyatt laughed at that, but it wasn't the cruel laugh that Chris was used to hearing, it was kind, loving and gentle. "No, short stuff, I didn't." 

"I'm not short!" 

"You're shorter than me!" The bed dipped slightly as someone sat down on it. It was Wyatt, Chris realized, once he continued, "I am worried that he hasn't woken up yet though and I couldn't find anything in any of the books I looked at that explained why he hasn't. If he's still out in an hour I'm telling them." There was a babble of voices as the three argued. Complaints from the two girls mingled with Wyatt trying to talk over them before Wyatt silenced them by pointing out, "They're going to notice if he's still unconscious when they get home."

"We are going to be in _so_ much trouble," one of the girls muttered, just loud enough for Chris to hear.

"Yeah," Wyatt sighed, "Yeah, we are."

Everyone was quiet for a minute before there was a light smacking noise. "Come on, Mel, maybe if we get dinner started mom, dad, Aunt Piper and Uncle Leo won't yell as much when they get home." Someone, probably Wyatt, must have made some sort of face at that because the same person, who Chris realized must be P.J., added, "I did say 'as much', didn't I? We're still getting grounded. Chris got hurt protecting us. Even if he healed up right away he still was hurt because of what we did."

"He's going to be okay, right Wyatt?" the other girl, Mel, asked. Her voice shook the same way Paige's had when the Charmed Ones had found him dying from the poisonous darklighter arrow in Gith's lair. 

"I hope so, kiddo." Wyatt's voice was muffled somewhat. There had been some shifting about and sniffling. Was Mel crying? Was Wyatt hugging her? "And Dad and Aunt Paige know a lot more about healing than I do, I'm sure they'll know how to help him if he doesn't wake up on his own."

"You're probably right."

"I'm always right. Now go help P.J. in the kitchen, you know what kind of trouble she gets into on her own in there. I'll be down in a minute."

Mel bent over him, pressing a kiss into his hair. "I'm sorry, Chris," she whispered, and then she was gone.

Wyatt stayed sitting next to him, his hip pressed up against Chris' side. "You better be okay, little brother. I don't know what I'd do without you." After staying a moment longer Wyatt sighed and then left the room.

Chris waited until the sound of footsteps faded away and then slowly counted to one hundred in his head, giving plenty of time for someone to have changed their mind and decided to check back in on him. When no one did he finally opened his eyes again before sitting up carefully, trying to make sure the bedsprings stayed completely silent as he moved.

Okay, so, he was back in the future. Somehow. But not the one he left, one with a good Wyatt, which meant dad had managed to stop Gideon before Wyatt could be turned, preventing the terrible timeline he'd lived in from happening, but how did he wind up here?

P.J. was obviously his cousin. She had a nickname that began with a 'P' and apparently enjoyed vanquishing demons. Even if she hadn't referred to his parents as 'Aunt Piper and Uncle Leo' he'd have guessed she was a Halliwell based on those two things alone. Whether she was Paige or Piper's daughter he didn't know, but the fact either of them had managed to _have_ a daughter meant good things for this timeline. 

Good things like… apparently mom and dad were both still alive? And he had a sister? A younger sister. And a brother who was _good_. Wyatt hadn't turned evil. Mom was alive and Wyatt was good. He'd done it. He'd somehow managed to fix everything he'd hoped to fix when he went back in time. More than he'd ever thought he could, actually. 

It was amazing. 

And impossible.

He shouldn't be here. _A_ Chris Halliwell should be, that much was obvious, but it should be the one who mom was pregnant with when he was the Charmed Ones' whitelighter. The one who grew up with a sister and a cousin and a world that had never fallen apart. The one who had a brother who adored him. Not him. 

He'd died. In those last moments he'd come to accept that his destiny had been to travel into the past to warn the sisters and Leo about Wyatt and keep it from happening and that he wasn't going to get a chance to see the world he'd helped save. The baby about to be born would see it, but not him. It wasn't what he'd wanted, how he'd hoped things would end, but maybe it had been just meant to be. Fated. And there was no fighting fate.

Unless there was? Chris scrubbed a hand across his face. An Angel of Death had once told him his 'situation' was unique and had required special handling but eventually, once Piper and Leo had worked out things between them and conceived him, had told him that he'd been given a second chance. Was this a third chance?

If it was, then how was that fair to the Chris who had lived in this timeline until now?

This was all so messed up.

What should he do? He could orb to Magic School and try to do some research on his own but it probably wasn't a great idea since it sounded like mom and dad were there. But it also sounded like Paige and maybe Phoebe were there as well and maybe their husbands too? And while Chris was pretty sure he could look at a future version of his dad and the Charmed Ones without giving anything immediately away, trying to cover the fact he wouldn't recognize his uncles or even know their names was probably impossible.

He supposed he could go and explain everything, but did he really want to dump all this on his parents though? How would he even tell them anyway? When they looked at him they would see their son, the one they raised, not the Whitelighter who'd travelled back in time and nearly screwed everything up before finally making things right. He never questioned the fact that they loved him once they'd gotten to know him, to know who he really was, but he'd never really _been_ their son, not the way the Chris they'd raised to adulthood would probably was. And now that Chris was gone, somehow, and replaced by him?

They were going to hate him for that. Or at least resent him. Who wouldn't? But what could he do about it?

His thoughts kept spiraling around and around before he was finally jerked out of the endless loop of unanswerable questions a short time later by the door to Magic School opening and a lot of people coming back to the manor. It was at least a dozen people of various ages. A bunch of children ran through it and straight to the kitchen, yelling back and forth and demanding snacks. Several adults followed at a slower pace. Paige, he recognized her voice even if it was different than the last time he heard it, shouted something about not spoiling dinner while Piper - that was Piper, that was his _mom,_ she _was_ alive - was surprised that anyone had decided to help out by starting the prep work for the meal she'd planned to make. She sounded happy, but suspicious.

The stairs creaked as someone began walking up them. Their tread was heavy, familiar. 

"Dad?" Wyatt called from downstairs somewhere and the footsteps stopped.

Leo's worried, devastated face had been the last thing Chris had seen before he'd died and now he was going to see it again. 

"Wyatt? What are you doing here?" This Leo sounded different than the one he dimly remembered from his own childhood. This one was focused, caring. Older.

There were some quick footfalls, probably Wyatt jogging up the stairs to where Leo had stopped. "We were going to tell you, but you came home early."

"You were going to tell us what?" Leo's tone wasn't one he recognized. There was a little of the disappointed annoyance he'd had when Chris had been working with the Charmed Ones in ways Leo hadn't necessarily approved of, but there was also a level of worry and concern there that he wasn't used to hearing.

"There was a vanquishing and Mel and P.J. got in over their heads. Chris and I handled it, same as we have tons of times before. I know you said we shouldn't—"

"What happened? Where's Chris?"

"One of the demons got in a lucky hit. I healed him; I don't know what happened, he should be fine, but he hasn't woken up yet."

"Get your mother."

"Dad, I get that you're angry but, it's not that big a—"

"Get your mother **now.** Go!"

Then, before Chris could prepare himself or figure out what to say, Leo was racing into the room. "Chris?" 

"I'm okay."

Leo kneeled down at the side of the bed, oddly in the exact same position he was in the last time Chris saw him, and looked up at him, reaching out slowly before cupping his face. "Chris?" he repeated, but this time his voice broke.

"Le-Dad, it's okay. I'm okay."

Piper ran in then and the shock of seeing her nearly took his breath away. Like Leo she looked older, not surprisingly since probably about twenty years or so had passed for them since Gideon attacked him, but she also looked so happy. Despite the obvious worry on her face he saw laugh lines, contentment, and an ease he'd never seen in her before. "Chris." It was said the same way Leo had, broken and scared but a little hopeful too.

"What's wrong?" he asked, because something obviously was and he'd been her Whitelighter for long enough that worrying over her had become an ingrained habit he didn't even think to break.

"Wyatt said there'd been an attack." Chris knew that hadn't been all Wyatt had told their father. He didn't know if Leo knew that Chris had overheard them on the stairs, but Leo was only commenting on the attack and didn't seem surprised that Chris was awake…. What was going on? 

"It's fine. I'm all healed up now. It's fine, I'm okay." He rubbed where Gideon had stabbed him with the athame, still trying to wrap his head around the fact the wound was healed and he'd somehow travelled into a future where everything had worked out right.

Both of his parents noticed his movement though and it must have given something away or confirmed something in their minds because Piper surged forward and swept him into her arms, clinging to him tightly and then Leo wrapped his own arms around them, sweeping them both into a bone crushing hug. "Mom? Dad? What…." 

"Oh, god, _Chris_." Why did she keep saying his name like that? Did she know he wasn't the same Chris who'd been here this morning? How?

"Piper," Leo began, his voice soft in a way Chris hadn't heard before. "We knew this was a possibility. The injury probably just… sped things along."

They released him and went back to staring, like they were afraid that if they let him out of their sight he'd disappear on them or something. It was disconcerting and uncomfortable and he didn't know what to make of it. "What's going on?" he finally asked, breaking the heavy silence.

Instead of answering Leo asked, "What happened earlier today? How did you get hurt?" 

Since 'Gideon stabbed me and I died in your arms' seemed like the wrong thing to say, Chris gestured to the door, hastily trying to cover whatever he'd let slip by saying, "Like Wyatt told you, it was a demon attack. Mel and, and," shit what was her name, it began with a 'P' which wasn't helpful because of course it began with a 'P' but he couldn't remember what it actually was, damn it. "Mel and," he tried again, but while it was on the tip of his tongue, he just couldn't remember his cousin's name. 

"P.J.," Leo said carefully. "Her name is P.J., it's short for Prudence Johnna. She's Phoebe's oldest daughter." Right, that was it, P.J., he thought to himself before realizing everything Leo had said. Why would he have told him whose daughter P.J. was? He was supposed to have grown up with her, he should have known something like that. Unless. Unless they _knew_.

"It's okay," Piper said, reaching out to stroke his cheek, a featherlight, hesitant touch. "We've been expecting this. It's okay. You're here. You're home."

"I. What?"

"I don't think the last thing you remember before waking up in this room has anything to do with Wyatt, Mel, P.J. and demons," Leo said, his voice still careful and soft, like he was talking to a wounded animal and not his fully grown son. "I think the last thing you remember was Wyatt, Gideon and… me."

"Dad," Chris started, but then didn't know what else to say.

"This was how it was meant to be." Piper sat on the edge of the bed and patted the bed next to her. "Sit, give us a chance to explain."

Feeling out of his element and more than a little confused, Chris sat down. Wanting a little distance however, he tucked one leg under himself so he could lean up against the headboard and be a little further away.

Leo meanwhile grabbed the chair from the desk and, allowing Chris his space, put it closer to the end of the bed next to Piper. "I don't know if Wyatt or the others mentioned it to you, but several of us have been spending a lot of time doing research at Magic School lately. If it had just been Paige and I no one would have noticed or thought much of it, but the longer it took the more we risked the day coming without us knowing ahead of time so we needed more help."

"What day? I don't understand."

"How many sisters does P.J. have?" Piper asked suddenly, the topic change momentarily throwing him. "What are their names?"

"What?"

"Who is their father?" Piper continued, when he couldn't provide an answer. "You have no idea, do you? And that's okay. It's okay. We know."

The did, didn't they. There was no point in trying to hide it any longer. "You know I'm not your son?"

"Not our son! Of course you're our son!" In all his time back in the past, he'd never heard Piper get so angry.

"No, I'm not."

Leo held his hand up, stopping Piper before she could yell any at him more and addressed the issue himself, saying, "So you're not Christopher Perry Halliwell, the half-Whitelighter, half-Witch who travelled back in time to prevent his brother from turning evil?" 

"No, no, I am. I didn't. I mean. I meant, you know I'm _that_ Chris. The one who destroyed your marriage and lied to you for nearly a year and not... Not your son. Not the one you raised," he said, gesturing to Leo before turning to Piper and adding, "Not the one you lived to see grow up."

"It's alright, Chris," Piper began, but Chris couldn't stop, he needed them to understand.

"I don't know why I'm here. _He_ should be here, not me. This is his life. He's the one with two parents, a sister, at least one uncle, and I don't even know how many cousins. Not me. I shouldn't be here."

The two of them looked like he'd punched them or something. "You made this world, Chris," Leo said softly. "You have every right to be in it."

"But what about your Chris?"

"You are our Chris, sweetie." Piper sounded so sincere Chris had to blink back tears. He picked at a loose thread on the blanket for something to do with his hands and an excuse to not have to look at their faces.

"Your mother's right," Leo added. "And, this isn't what you think. Will you listen? Give us a chance to explain?"

Not quite trusting his voice, he nodded.

"There's a lot of complicated magical theory that we had to work through, and there was fallout from three separate time travel spells to consider and it involved a little bit of fate and a lot of destiny, a strong sense of will and the aftereffect of a great injustice being done. Well, let's just say it's complicated. Really, really complicated. But, boiled down, it means you didn't die that day in the manor. You left us, but you didn't die."

"So, what, my spirit somehow traveled here and took over the body of someone else? How is that fair?"

"No, Chris, let your father finish."

"You haven't taken over anything. You're you and you're him. He was always you, even if he didn't realize it yet. There was always going to be an issue, for want of another word, when the two of you merged, we just didn't know exactly what was going to happen or how it would play out. I think it's possible getting injured in the demon attack earlier just gave you the opportunity to come back a little earlier or a little stronger than you might have otherwise."

"Merged? But, I'm just me."

Piper scooted a little closer and reached out, putting her hand over his. "Chris, do you know what day today is? Why it's so significant?"

"No," he admitted.

"It's the day you cast the spell to go back in time to try to save your brother."

"We think, anyway," Leo said, pulled his chair a little closer as well so he could add his hand on top of Piper's. "You never told us the actual date, of course."

"You never actually told us a lot of things," Piper added, but without the bite those kind of complaints had always had, back when he was their Whitelighter.

"And we understand why you didn't, why you couldn't, although it did result in a lot of calculations for us to try to narrow it down to exactly when it was and even then it was only a guess until…."

"Until you were here."

"So you knew this would happen?" Shocked, Chris looked at his parents. Their faces had changed over the years, but he could still read them well enough to see they weren't lying to him.

"Not this exactly. We knew something would. Not right away though. We were heartbroken when you died. We had baby you and we loved him, but there was still this Chris-shaped hole in our lives. A few years later an adult version of you and your brother travelled back in time to find out why Wyatt had suddenly lost his powers and we realized that you remembered your time as our Whitelighter. You shouldn't have, not since the Wyatt that was with you obviously had never turned evil so the Chris who had traveled with him was the one raised in that timeline and therefore wasn't you, but the one we were currently raising." Piper huffed, and shook her head. "Time travel is always so confusing to try to explain."

"No, I get it. I think. The Wyatt who lost his powers and travelled to the past with his brother, he was older than the one here? Now?"

"Yes, by about, what, two or three years?" Leo looked at Piper for confirmation and she nodded.

"So you guys realized at some point your Chris, this Chris," Chris gestured around the room, "either came into my memories or I took him over or something? Did you ask him, me, the time travelling Chris, what happened?"

"We didn't have a lot of time to talk, unfortunately. Things were a little chaotic when they were there," Leo explained.

"How unsurprising," Chris muttered, half under his breath but loud enough to get a gentle swat on the arm from Piper.

"Between all the resources at Magic School and all the various contacts we've made in the magical community we started to try to come up an explanation for how that Chris could have known things you had experienced, not him. At first we thought you'd been reborn as baby Chris and as he grew he'd come into your memories, but that didn't seem to be the case. We summoned Grams and Mom and asked them to find you in the afterlife, but they said you weren't there. Eventually, we figured out that you hadn't actually died after Gideon stabbed you." 

Chris shifted uncomfortably at Piper's explanation. What he remembered felt very much like dying, but he wasn't about to tell his parents that.

"We think your spirit was… unmoored, for lack of a better term," she continued, "and traveled back to where it belonged in the timeline. Here. Now."

"But this isn't where I'm from. Maybe it's when, but it's not my timeline."

"It's the timeline that exists now, thanks to you. Because of you Wyatt wasn't turned and your mom is still alive. You saved them. You saved the word."

"What about the other me, the Chris who belongs here?"

Piper reached out with her other hand, and pressed it against his heart. "He's still here," she said before tapping his forehead. "And here."

"No one was quite sure how it would all play out, but the consensus was the two of you will merge. He'll get your memories and you his. It might take a bit for everything to settle, for you to find an even keel, but it will happen."

"But what am I supposed to do until then? I have a sister I don't know, cousins I've never met, and a whole _world_ I know nothing about!"

"What's Mel's full name?" Leo asked instead of addressing Chris' concerns.

"Melinda," he replied automatically.

"See, sweetie, it's already happening."

"Her nickname is Mel. Knowing what it's short for doesn't prove anything. You named her after our ancestor, the first of the Warren witches. I could have just figured it out."

"But you didn't," Leo countered. "You knew."

Had he? Or had it been a lucky guess? He wasn't sure.

"When's the last time you saw your grandfather?" Piper pressed.

"Grandpa? There was that whole disaster with the Scabbar demons back when we still thought it was a demon that had turned Wyatt and there was that birthday party for the twins when…." Wait a minute, twins? What twins? He could picture their faces, but that was all. Trying to control the panic and confusion at having memories that weren't his, he curled in on himself and buried his face in his hands.

"It's okay, Chris." Leo's strong arms wrapped around him in a way that was both comfortably familiar and utterly strange. "I know everything's hard right now, but it'll be all right. It should settle soon."

The sound of someone coming up the stairs had Piper jumping up and rushing out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her. 

"Mom?"

Chris wasn't surprised that the person coming to check up on him was Wyatt.

"I thought I asked you to stay downstairs and help corral the kids."

"You did, I was, but…. Mom, is Chris okay?"

"Wyatt—" 

"This is all my fault. I saw Mel and P.J. paging through the Book of Shadows and whispering among themselves. I should have realized they were going to try a vanquishing…."

Piper must have herded Wyatt away from the room because his voice faded enough to be indistinct mumblings. 

"Does he know?" Chris asked Leo. Pressed into Leo's chest the way he was, his question came out a little muffled, but still understandable.

"Know what?" 

"About what almost happened with Gideon. About the whole evil timeline thing. About me going back in time to save him. About all… that."

"Ah, that." Leo was quiet for a moment, running his hand up and down Chris' back the way he always did when Chris was little and woke up in the middle of the night after a nightmare. Except Leo had never been there when nightmares woke Chris, he was always too busy for that. It was a memory though, other Chris' memory, so his too in a way that felt weird but good.

"He knows some of the basics, all of the next generation of Halliwells do. We never tried to hide the fact the Charmed Ones had a Whitelight who'd travelled back in time to save the future, although we never told them who it was. We also made sure they all knew that sometimes you can do the wrong thing for the right reasons and that claiming you are doing something in the name of the 'greater good' is nearly always merely a way of justifying actions you know deep down are wrong."

"That's all they know?"

"The fact you were so careful with sharing any details of the future you came from made it easier for us. We could honestly tell them we barely knew anything about that timeline. For example, as far as we knew you and Wyatt were the only ones to be born in it despite the fact there's nine of you in your generation now."

"Nine?" Chris couldn't help but laugh when he realized (remembered) that all three of the Charmed Ones had ended up having three children. There was a certain symmetry to that.

"I assume that wasn't the case before you changed things?"

"No, you were right, it was just Wyatt and me." 

"Chris, I have to ask," Leo began in a hesitant way that made Chris nervous, "is Wyatt going to be a problem for you?"

"What do you mean? What kind of problem could he be?"

"The last time you saw him when he was this age he was evil. And, while you never outright said it, you implied, well, that Bianca died because of your attempts to save him."

"Bianca." Thinking about her still hurt, but not as badly as it once had. "Has this Chris come across her in this timeline?"

"If you have you've never mentioned her."

He couldn't be certain, but Chris had a feeling they hadn't crossed paths here. He wondered if she'd turned against the Phoenix here or if she was still acting as an assassin. Maybe, if he could find her, they could have a future together in this world. Or maybe not. Time would tell if they were meant to be.

"Who do you think you will see when you look at Wyatt?"

"My brother," Chris said with a shrug. "He's my brother. All I ever wanted was to save him, back when the world had gone wrong. Even after… after Bianca, I couldn't hate him. He's my brother, I love him."

Leo hugged him tightly. "I am so proud of you. I never said that enough before, but I am _so_ proud of you. What you've done. How you kept at it, despite what I and the sisters put you through. You're amazing."

"Dad." He could feel himself blushing under that kind of praise.

"It's the truth." Leo gave him one final hug before pressing a kiss onto his forehead and standing up. "Now I'm going to go save Wyatt from your mother's wrath - Mel and P.J. are too young to be vanquishing on their own and Wyatt was supposed to be keeping an eye on everything out here while we were all at Magic School and while what happened afterwards wasn't his fault you did get hurt - while you rest a little more here."

"Are you going to tell everyone about me?"

"I can if you want. Or we can wait until you're more... settled for want of a better word. Comfortably merged?"

"Comfortably merged," Chris parroted with a snicker.

"Piper, Phoebe, Paige and I know, of course. And we told your Uncle Coop because he was helping us figure all this out. But Wyatt, Melinda and your cousins? It's entirely up to you as how much we tell them, if anything at all."

"What do you think I should do?"

"I think you should take some time to think about it. Get comfortable in the timeline you saved and let the memories of Chris Halliwell, college student, and Chris Halliwell, time travelling Whitelighter, find an equilibrium before making any big decisions. Your mother and I will support you, whatever decision you make. For now, it might be best just to tell everybody you took a bad hit in the demon attack earlier, which is entirely true, and took a little longer than expected to recover, which, again, is entirely true."

"And to think you used to harp on me for not telling you guys everything."

"I'd like to claim it's because I'm older and wiser, but it could just be because I can see that keeping secrets can sometimes be for the best now." 

Stuck between feeling vaguely smug and trying not to laugh, Chris decided it would be best not to comment on that.

"Get some rest. If you want to come down for dinner, that's fine. If not someone, probably one of your Aunts if I had to guess, will bring you something up to you." He squeezed Chris' shoulder. "Welcome home, son."


End file.
